Page 16 of The Starving Saints

The castle is unnaturally quiet. Treila has no trouble slipping down the steps, through the king’s quarters, and over to the

staircase that leads down to her little workroom. Her mind is loud enough to make up the difference, however, humming with

a hundred different thoughts. The impossible candle in her hand, the rotted fruit smell of Phosyne’s breath, the renewed possibilities

of that hole in the ground.

And she can still feel Ser Voyne’s hand on hers the day before. The sweeping rush of being so close, finally, to what she’s dreamed of for years.

She can also see Ser Voyne’s face in the yard just a few hours ago, transported and transfigured and—

Very far away from her.

She missed her chance to really drive the knife home. Take the guilt she’d seen in Ser Voyne’s eyes and pluck at the taut

harpstring of it until, finally, Ser Voyne fell at her feet and begged for forgiveness. She would have been so beautifully devastated when Treila refused. But the rhythm of the

castle is changing drastically, and Treila isn’t sure how it will shake out, except that Voyne is too central to how their

closed world runs; with these intruders, she will be in her element again. She won’t have space for doubt and regret.

If Treila’s lucky, she won’t care about leaving Voyne to her fate, either.

There’s no point in wasting time. Whoever these guests are, however they got into Aymar, they’re not a way out. At least not

one that Treila can take advantage of. They’ve shifted the balance so abruptly that Treila hates them by reflex. Saints , she thinks, and wants to laugh, because there is no such thing as saints. If there were, she wouldn’t be trapped here.

Really, she’s right back where she started, but she can see more clearly now. She’s got a light for her darkness.

Treila crouches where Phosyne had lain not half an hour before, and sucks at her lower lip, staring at her fingers. Just little

pricks; Phosyne’s had barely bled (though Treila thinks that has more to do with why she’d been lying half-dead on her workshop

floor than any calculation of how deep to pierce her skin). Treila has suffered worse. She’d bled more from scraped knees

when Ser Voyne—

She pricks her fingers, and the pain seizes her attention, drags it back to the present. She dips her fingers into the little

pot of reeking sulfur, then swallows down sludgy saliva and hums the opening note to “On Breath,” wavering and embarrassed,

and pinches her bloody fingers to the wick.

Heat springs to life between them, and Treila snatches her hand back, stunned.

It works.

It fucking works .

A candle is not a pick is not a door, but it is real , and it shouldn’t be, and Treila can’t look away.

She stays there, kneeling on the cold stone, for several minutes, staring until she sees that light burned into the inside

of her eyelids. Then, and only then, does she remember what she’s here to do.

She wriggles out of her clothing once more, but this time remembers to pack food in the bundle she makes of it. Nothing to

do about the water, though. She will have to move quickly.

The light should help with that.

She lowers onto her belly on the cold floor, picks up the candle once more, and places it as far inside the gap as she can.

Then she clasps the bundle between her calves, and wriggles her way in after it.

The candle burns without protest. It illuminates jagged stone, fractures in the earth that she hadn’t noticed with just her

fingers before. It both comforts her and makes her skin crawl; the earth feels so much closer and heavier , now that she can see it. In a brief fit of panic, she tries to blow the candle out—and it refuses.

So Treila squeezes her eyes shut, and continues forward by touch.

You’re acting like a child , she scolds herself, but it’s easier in the dark. There aren’t any turns, anyway, and without sight, the walls that press

in on her feel only like boundaries, not like the tons of rock above her. They are simply lines she cannot cross, not because

of man-built walls but because there simply is nothing on the other side.

She wriggles forward, legs grasping tight to her bundle, a rat in a nest. With only one hand free, she drags herself along,

loses track of herself in the dark. She makes the trickiest turn without issue, barely noticing it. She’s through almost before

she realizes it, reaching for the ground and finding nothing beneath her. She pitches forward, drops the candle, eyes snapping

open. Carefully, Treila rights herself and drags the bundle up her body. She clutches it to her chest and picks her way down

to the ledge below.

The chamber is exactly as she left it, though the golden glow of the candle where it has come to a precarious stop clashes

with the faint luminescence of the stream. Treila can only see the blue light at the far end of the little cave, where the

candlelight begins to fail. Otherwise, it is erased by more aggressive yellow. She lowers herself down to the narrow bank,

righting her candle as she passes.

She dresses this time. Single stocking, smalls, boots, chemise, kirtle, apron, even cap. It cuts the chill, and she has been

below the earth long enough to appreciate the barrier, now. Her skin is gooseflesh all over, scraped and raw, and she realizes,

as she puts herself back together, that her heart is racing.

Her gaze fixes on the crack.

It is innocuous, in the light. A little line of darkness. There’s no obvious path forward; no spidering accessory cracks,

no widening a little ways up that she missed in her panic. But Treila takes her time, even turns her back on it to scan the

far wall for a matching exit; perhaps the air flows in and out down here , and the breeze she feels back in her workroom is only an echo.

But no. There is only the one crack. Wherever the water goes from here, Treila cannot find it.

So she approaches the crack.

It doesn’t whisper to her. It remains only stone, even as Treila reaches behind her, fumbles, grabs up the unmelting wax and manages to singe the pad of her palm for the trouble. She brings the candle to the crack, and hopes that her desperate madwoman’s heresy can reveal a way forward.

It’s still too narrow to admit her whole hand, but the candle is as slender as a finger, and she feeds it into the darkness.

A little farther in, she sees the passage widen again. And then she has reached the limit of the candle. She draws it back

and tries to think. If she can find the tools, she can break this thin ridge of stone and get through, but she told Phosyne

the truth: she doesn’t think any pick has survived the Priory’s requisitions, and what remains (swords, armor, arrowheads)

will not be strong enough for this.

So much for the flame revealing anything useful.

Frustrated, she turns back to the tunnel that will return her to the castle, but one glance of the flame off the close walls

has her heart hammering again. She dunks the candle in the stream. The cavern plunges into its almost-darkness, and now she

is lit only by the steady, unnatural glow of the water. Her fear ebbs.

She rubs the heels of her hands against her eyes and lets out a creaking laugh. Her confidence wavers, threatens to crack

beneath the absurdity of her situation, the desperation.

Moved, perhaps, by whimsy, she sets the candle down and turns back to the gap. She rests her head against the stone. “I am lost,” she confesses, to herself, laughing again. “So many roads to walk down, and all of them lead nowhere.”

The air shifts around her. Her eyes shut. She waits.

“I’ve missed you,” the crack breathes against her lips.

This time she does not scream.

She stands entirely still. Her lips curl just a fraction. This might just be her mind, fracturing at last from the strain

bowing her shoulders, but she doesn’t think so. Above the smell of damp earth and stone, she can smell a metallic tang, too,

like the inside of the smithy. It cuts through the lingering stink of shit, replaces it entirely as she breathes deep.

If this is not just a desperate imagining, then perhaps it is a new road.

“And who are you?” she asks, now trembling with eagerness. With a flash of desire. Down here, in the crowded dark, she feels like herself , truly herself, so close to how she’d felt when she’d dangled that fruit in front of Phosyne but oh, so much sweeter than

that.

It’s time to escape, but not to give up.

“A friend.” The voice is growing firmer, louder. It’s still just a whisper, but it sounds young. Boyish, perhaps. Pleased.

She fights the urge to light the candle again, press it into the gap to get a look at the speaker’s face.

“A friend? And how do you know that?”

“Because I’d like to help you,” the voice—the boy—replies. “If you’re lost, I can help. I know where you are.”

A thought occurs to her. Her brow furrows as she flattens herself against the gap, standing straighter. “Are you a sapper?

Sent by Etrebia to find a way into our water? Did you foul it yourself?”

He laughs, delighted. “Look down,” he says.

She does. She sees only the faint glow of the water, running into the crack. Into the...

Oh. The well shaft is between her and the encamped army. From here, the water flows out toward the cliff edge. There is no way

the enemy could reach here, would reach here without spilling up into Aymar itself first.

Fear twists in her at last. He cannot be Etrebian, and he cannot be here , because there’s nowhere for somebody to come from.

“You see,” he murmurs, still pleased. “Oh, you are clever. I like you. What is your name?”

Treila is a common name, and she’s never lied about it. She’s too possessive of her own identity, even transformed as it’s become.

But fear makes her hesitate. She’s too cautious to answer straight out, no matter how harmless the question seems. She turns

the question around, barbs out. “Tell me yours, first.”

He laughs again. He doesn’t answer. “I’ll just call you clever , then,” he says instead. “Are you frightened? You sound a little frightened. You don’t need to be.”

Treila doesn’t speak.

“I know the way out,” he says. “To freedom, and green grass, and the bounty of summer. I can give it to you.”

Her stomach cramps with longing. She closes her eyes and imagines it, fleeing once more into the woods, but this time in a

better time of year, with more skills at hand. She would stay close, she thinks. Watch the castle from afar. Wait to see if

it falls, or if Ser Voyne emerges, scarred but ready to be pursued once more. She can reset the calendar, try again.

Or maybe leave. Walk away. She suspects she could find a home in Etrebia’s camp. If they lose, she could follow them across

the border. If not, she has some knowledge their leaders might find valuable, and perhaps one day she’d sit in her childhood

home once more. Be the traitor they accused her father of being.

“What are you dreaming of?” the boy asks.

Home , she almost says.

“Your breath sounds melancholy,” he adds. “Do you long for it so much, then?”

“If you’re going to do it, then do it,” she snaps in challenge, suddenly too raw, too delicate to be pushed further.

He hums, but offers nothing else.

He also doesn’t retreat. She can feel him, through the narrow gap. Patient. Waiting. She thinks of Phosyne on the floor of

her workshop. “Or tell me what you ask for in return.”

“That’s more fair, don’t you think?” he asks.

“It is the way the world works,” she concedes.

“A touch.”

Treila blinks, confused, unable to form any response, question or otherwise.

A soft sound comes from the crack—not a word, not a breath, something closer to a hand against rock.

“Just a touch?” she asks.

“To start with.” She swears she can hear a smile. She doesn’t hear a threat, though she imagines one anyway. To start with is an open door. She doesn’t want an unbounded bargain. Too many things can slip in.

She looks down, steps back just enough to measure the height of the gap again. Thinks over what she knows. Here, now, she

has no further options; a candle gives her nothing. Above, the world is swiftly contracting, and the rules have changed so

much Treila will not know where to step safely for much longer. What can she give Phosyne to produce another answer? What

else does she have to bargain with, herself?

She doesn’t suspect she’ll find the woman half-dead again anytime soon, anyway. She’s more likely to find a corpse.

Just a touch . She thinks of the green world beyond this dark hole, and comes once more to the gap. She hears a boyish intake of breath.

She closes her eyes.

She slides one finger into the stone. She waits to feel skin, or scruff, or fabric.

Instead, she feels teeth. Wet lips closing around her. A tongue curling around her joint, sliding along her nail.

Treila shouts and draws back, stumbles, nearly falls. She loses a strip of flesh in the process. Blood oozes from the open

welt as she clutches her hand to her chest.

“Come back,” the voice entreats. “Come back, or the deal won’t be satisfied.”

“You said a touch!” she cries, shocked, horrified, confused.

“I’m hungry,” the voice whines, louder now, loud enough that it echoes around the little cavern.

Treila can’t stop her bark of a laugh. “Join the club.”

“You understand,” he counters. “You know what it is to starve.” And she does, but she has never—would never—

Except she has. Just not like this. Not so openly, so baldly, and she remembers Voyne in the garden, disgusted and overwrought.

Nausea rises in her.

“Can you even free me?” she asks.

“Oh, yes. Just satisfy my hunger.”

“I have food,” she says, swallowing the bile down.

“I don’t want your food,” he says. “ This is the price of freedom: one finger. You can even choose it.”

She shudders.

When contrasted against her stores, though, it’s not so heavy a price. Strange. Unthinkable, almost. But not heavy, and for a moment, she even thinks to pay it. That only lasts as long as it takes her to ask, “What kind of man wants a girl’s finger?”

He only laughs in reply.

No kind of man , she realizes. Not even a starving man would ask for a finger .

With shaking hands, she grabs up the pillar of wax again, finds the little jar of powder. She fumbles for the pin she left

in the hem of her skirt, pricks her fingers and dips them, whistles out the note.

“What are you doing, clever?” the voice asks. He sounds curious, not afraid. Treila doubts, but pinches the wick anyway.

The flame springs to life once more, and she jams it into the crack. Nothing looks back at her. No teeth, no lips, no tongue.

Not even an eye, peering out at her, watching.

“You’d hide from me?” she hisses.

There is no response. The scent of metal is gone. And Treila, for the first time since she doused the candle, feels like she’s

alone again.

Perhaps Phosyne’s bargain was worth something after all.

Treila leaves the candle burning, stuck between two stones just before the crack, and she retreats back into the castle by

touch.